Zeno's Conscience

  This news didn’t displease me. I was acquainted with that field and I knew that it would take me about an hour to reach it. Since I had determined to walk for two hours, I liked the idea of being able to give my walk a specific purpose. Thus there was no danger of its being interrupted by a sudden fit of laziness. I set off across the plain, which is higher than the road, of which I could therefore see only the edge, and the crowns of a few flowering trees. I was really in great spirits: in my shirtsleeves as I was, and hatless, I felt very light. I breathed in that pure air and, as I often did at that time, while I walked I performed the Niemeyer pulmonary exercises, which a German friend had taught me, very useful for a man who leads a rather sedentary life.

  Having reached that field, I saw Teresina working near the road. I went toward her and then noticed that, up ahead, her father and her two little brothers were working, boys of an age I couldn’t have said precisely, between ten and fourteen. Working perhaps makes the old feel exhausted, but, thanks to the excitement that accompanies it, still younger than when they are not doing the work.

  Laughing, I said to Teresina: “You’re still in time, Teresina. Don’t wait too long.”

  She didn’t understand me, and I explained nothing to her. Since she didn’t remember, it was possible to resume our former relations. I had already repeated the experiment, and with a favorable result. Addressing those few words to her, I had caressed her not just with my eyes alone.

  I quickly made an arrangement with Teresina’s father for the roses. He would allow me to cut as many as I wanted, and afterwards we would agree on the price. He wanted to go back to work at once, while I turned toward home, but then he changed his mind and ran after me. Overtaking me, in a very low voice he asked: “Didn’t you hear something? They say the war’s broken out.”

  “Yes! We all know that! About a year ago,” I answered.

  “I don’t mean that one,” he said, out of patience. “I’m talking about the one with - ” And he nodded toward the other side of the nearby Italian border. “Do you know anything about it?” He looked at me, anxious to hear my reply.

  “As you must realize…” I said with great confidence, “if I don’t know anything, that means there isn’t anything to know. I’ve come from Trieste, and the latest news I heard there was that the war has been averted for good. In Rome they’ve overthrown the Cabinet that wanted war, and now they have Giolitti.”

  He was immediately relieved. “That’s why we’re covering these potatoes, which are very promising and will be ours! The world is so full of big talkers!” With the sleeve of his shirt he wiped away the sweat trickling down his brow.

  Seeing how happy he was, I tried to make him even happier. I love happy people, I honestly do. So I said some things I really don’t like to recall. I declared that even if the war were to break out, it wouldn’t be fought up here. First of all there was the sea, where it was high time they did some fighting; and besides, in Europe there was no lack of battlefields for anyone who wanted them. There was Flanders, there were various departments of France. I had also heard—I no longer remembered from whom—that in this world there was now such a need for potatoes that they carefully dug them up even on the battlefields. I spoke quite a while, looking steadily at Teresina; tiny, minute, she had crouched on the ground, to test its hardness before taking her hoe to it.

  The peasant, perfectly reassured, returned to his work. I, on the contrary, had transferred a part of my own serenity to him and was left with much less for myself. It was certainly true that at Lucinico we were too close to the border. I would discuss it with Augusta. It might be a good idea for us to return to Trieste and perhaps go on even farther in that direction or another. To be sure, Giolitti had returned to power, but there was no knowing if, arriving there, he would continue to see things the way he had seen them when that high position had been occupied by someone else.

  I was made even more nervous by a casual encounter with a platoon of soldiers, marching along the road in the direction of Lucinico. They were not young soldiers, and were very badly outfitted. At their hip hung what we in Trieste call the durlindana, that long bayonet that, in the summer of 1915, the Austrians had had to take from the old storehouses.

  For some time I walked behind them, anxious to be home quickly. Then I was irritated by a certain gamey odor that they emanated, and I slowed my pace. My uneasiness and my haste were foolish. It was also foolish to be uneasy just because I had observed the uneasiness of a peasant. Now I could see my villa in the distance, and the platoon was no longer on the road. I quickened my steps to arrive finally at my coffee and milk.

  It was here that my adventure began. At a turn in the road I found myself halted by a sentinel, who shouted: “Zurück,” putting himself actually in the position to fire. I wanted to speak to him in German, since he had shouted in German, but that was the only German word he knew, so he repeated it, more and more menacingly.

  I had to go zurück, and, looking always over my shoulder in fear that the other man, to make his meaning clearer, might fire on me, I withdrew with a haste that remained with me even when I could no longer see the soldier.

  But I hadn’t yet given up the idea of reaching my villa promptly. I thought that by crossing the hill to my right, I could pass well behind the threatening sentinel.

  The climb was not hard, especially as the tall grass had been trodden down by many people who must have passed by there before me. They must surely have been driven by the prohibition against the use of the road. Walking, I regained my confidence, and I thought that on arriving at Lucinico, I would immediately go and complain to the mayor about the treatment to which I had been subjected. If he allowed vacationers to be treated like that, soon nobody would come to Lucinico anymore!

  But, reaching the top of the hill, I had a nasty surprise, finding it occupied by that same platoon of soldiers with the gamey smell. Many soldiers were resting in the shade of a little peasant house I had known for a long time, at this hour completely empty; three of the men seemed to be on guard duty, but not facing the slope by which I had come; and some others were in a semicircle before an officer, who was giving them instructions, which he illustrated with a map he held in his hand.

  I didn’t have even a hat, which could serve me for greeting. Bowing several times and with my best smile, I approached the officer, who, seeing me, stopped speaking to his soldiers and started looking at me. Also the five Mamelukes surrounding him bestowed all their attention on me. Under these stares and on the uneven terrain it was difficult to move.

  The officer shouted: “Was will der dumme Kerl hier?” [What does this fool want?]

  Amazed that, without the slightest provocation, he would offend me like this, I wanted to demonstrate, in a manly fashion, that I was offended, but still with appropriate discretion, I altered my path and tried to arrive at the slope that would lead me to Lucinico. The officer started shouting that if I took even one more step, he would have his men shoot me. I immediately became very polite, and from that day to this, as I write, I have remained always very polite. It was barbaric to be forced to deal with such an idiot, but at least there was the advantage that he spoke proper German. It was such an advantage that, remembering it, I found it easier to speak to him politely. Animal that he was, it would have been a disaster if he hadn’t spoken German. I would have been lost.

  Too bad I didn’t speak that language more fluently, for in that case it would have been easy for me to make that surly gentleman laugh. I told him that at Lucinico my morning coffee was awaiting me, and I was separated from it only by his platoon.

  He laughed, I swear he laughed. He laughed, still cursing, and without the patience to let me finish. He declared that the Lucinico coffee would be drunk by someone else, and when he heard that in addition to the coffee, my wife was also awaiting me, he yelled, “Auch Ihre Frau wird von anderen gegessen werden. “ [Your wife, too, will be eaten by someone else.]

  By now he was in a better humor than I
. Then, apparently sorry he had said words to me that, underlined by the laughter of the five clods, could seem offensive, he turned serious and explained that I must give up hope of seeing Lucinico for some days, and in fact his friendly advice was not to ask to go there, because my mere asking could get me into trouble!

  “Haben Sie verstanden?” [Have you understood?]

  I had understood, but it wasn’t all that easy to adjust to giving up my coffee when it was less than half a kilometer away. Only for this I hesitated to leave, because it was obvious that if I were to descend that bill, toward my villa, on that day I would not arrive. And, to gain time, I meekly asked the officer: “But to whom should I speak in order to be able to go back to Lucinico and collect at least my hat and my jacket?”

  I should have realized that the officer was anxious to be left alone with his map and his men, but I hardly expected to provoke such fury.

  He yelled, making my ears ring, that he had already told me I wasn’t to ask. Then he ordered me to go wherever the devil might wish to take me (wo der Teufel Sie tragen will). The idea of being taken somewhere didn’t displease me, because I was very tired, but still I hesitated. Meanwhile, however, with all his shouting, the officer became increasingly angry and, in a highly threatening tone, he called on one of the five men around him and, addressing him as Herr Kaporal, gave him orders to conduct me back to the bottom of the hill and to watch me until I had disappeared down the road to Gorizia, and to shoot me if I hesitated to obey.

  Therefore I went down that hill fairly willingly: “Danke schön,” I said, also with no intention of irony.

  The corporal was a Slav who spoke rather decent Italian. He felt he had to be brutal in the officer’s presence, and to encourage me to descend the hill, he shouted “Marsch!” at me, but when we were a bit distant he became gentle and friendly. He asked me if I had news of the war, and if it was true that Italian intervention was imminent. He looked at me anxiously, awaiting my reply.

  So not even they, who were waging the war, knew if it existed or not! I wanted to make him as happy as possible, and I repeated to him the words with which I had calmed Teresina’s father. Afterwards they weighed on my conscience. In the horrible storm that broke, all the people I had reassured were probably killed. Who knows what surprise there must have been on their faces, crystallized by death? My optimism was incoercible. Hadn’t I heard the war in the officer’s words and, even more, in their sound?

  The corporal rejoiced, and to reward me, he also advised me not to attempt to reach Lucinico. Given my news, he believed the order preventing me from going home would be revoked the next day. But meanwhile he advised me to go to Trieste, to the Platzkommando, from which I could perhaps obtain a special pass.

  “All the way to Trieste?” I asked, frightened. “To Trieste, without my jacket, without my hat, without my coffee?”

  As far as the corporal knew, while we were talking, a heavy cordon of infantry was closing off all transit into Italy, creating a new and impassable frontier. With the smile of a superior person, he declared that, in his opinion, the shortest way to Lucinico was the one that passed through Trieste.

  Hearing this counsel repeated, I resigned myself and set off toward Gorizia, thinking to catch the noon train and go on to Trieste. I was agitated, but I must say I felt fine. I had smoked very little, and hadn’t eaten at all. I felt a lightness that I had missed for a long time. I wasn’t at all displeased to have to walk more. My legs ached slightly, but it seemed to me I could hold out till Gorizia, for my respiration was free and deep. Warming my legs with a brisk pace, the walking, in fact, did not tax me. And in my well-being, beating time as I walked, jolly because the tempo was unusually fast, I regained my optimism. Threats from this side, threats from that, but it wouldn’t come to war. And thus, when I arrived at Gorizia, I hesitated, wondering if I shouldn’t take a room in the hotel, spend the night, and return the next day to Lucinico to make my complaints to the mayor.

  I rushed first to the post office to telephone Augusta. But at the villa there was no answer.

  The clerk, a little man with a wispy beard, who, in his small, rigid person, seemed ridiculous and obstinate—the only thing I remember about him—hearing me curse angrily at the dumb telephone, approached me and said, “That’s the fourth time today that Lucinico has failed to answer.”

  When I turned to him, in his eye a great, joyous malice gleamed (I misspoke! there’s another thing I still remember!) and that gleaming eye of his sought mine, to see if I was really so surprised and angered. It took a good ten minutes for me to understand. Then there were no more doubts for me. Lucinico was, or a few minutes from now would be, in the line of fire. When I finally understood that eloquent look, I was on my way to the café, to have, anticipating lunch, the cup of coffee that had been due me since morning. I immediately changed direction and headed for the station. I wanted to be closer to my family, and—following the suggestions of my corporal friend—I went to Trieste.

  It was during that brief journey of mine that the war broke out.

  Thinking to arrive so early in Trieste, though there would have been time at the Gorizia station, I didn’t even have the cup of coffee I had so long been yearning for. I climbed into my carriage and, alone, addressed my thoughts to my loved ones, from whom I had been separated in such a strange way. The train proceeded normally until beyond Monfalcone.

  It seemed the war had not reached there yet. I regained my serenity thinking that at Lucinico probably things ‘would have taken more or less the same course as on this side of the border. At this hour, Augusta and my children would be traveling toward the interior of Italy. This serenity, together with my enormous, surprising hunger, procured me a long sleep.

  It was probably that same hunger that woke me. My train had stopped in the midst of what is called the Saxony of Trieste. The sea wasn’t visible, though it must have been very close, because a slight haze blocked any view into the distance. The Carso has a great sweetness in May, but it can be understood only by those not spoiled by the exuberantly colorful and lively springtimes in other regions. Here the stone crops out everywhere from a mild green that isn’t humble because soon it becomes the predominant note of the landscape.

  In other conditions I would have been hugely enraged not to be able to eat, suffering such hunger. But that day the grandeur of the historic event I had witnessed cowed me and led me to resignation. The conductor, to whom I gave some cigarettes, couldn’t procure me even a crust of bread. I told no one about my experiences of the morning. I would talk about them in Trieste, with a few intimate friends. From the border, toward which I pricked up my ear, no sound of fighting came. We had been stopped at that place to allow eight or nine trains to pass, storming down toward Italy. The gangrenous wound (as the Italian front was immediately called in Austria) had opened and needed matériel to nourish its purulence. And the poor men went there, snickering and singing. From all those trains came the same sounds of joy or drunkenness.

  When I reached Trieste, night had already descended on the city.

  The night was illuminated by the glow of many fires, and a friend who saw me heading home in my shirtsleeves shouted to me: “Did you take part in the looting?”

  Finally I managed to eat something, and immediately went to bed.

  A true, great weariness drove me to bed. I believe it was produced by the hopes and the doubts that were combating in my mind. I was still quite well, and in the brief period preceding the dream whose images my psychoanalysis had enabled me to retain, I remembered that I concluded my day with a last, childish, optimistic idea: On the frontier no one had yet died, and therefore peace could be regained.

  Now that I know my family is safe and sound, the life I lead doesn’t displease me. I haven’t much to do, but it can’t be said I’m idle. No buying or selling is allowed. Trade will be reborn when we have peace. From Switzerland, Olivi had some advice transmitted to me. If he only knew how hollow his counsels sound in this atmosphe
re, which is totally changed! I, for the moment, do nothing.

  24 March, 1916

  Since May of last year, I haven’t again touched this little book. Now, from Switzerland, Dr. S. writes me, asking me to send him everything I have so far recorded. It’s a curious request, but I have no objection to sending him also this notebook, from which he will clearly see what I think of him and of his therapy. Since he possesses all my confessions, let him keep also these few pages and a few more that I will gladly add for his edification. I haven’t much time, because my business occupies my day. But with Doctor S., I still want to have my say. I have given it so much thought that now my ideas are clear.

  Meanwhile he believes he will receive further confessions of sickness and weakness, and on the contrary he will receive the description of sound health, as perfect as my fairly advanced age will allow. I am cured! Not only do I not want to undergo psychoanalysis, but also I don’t need it! And my healthiness doesn’t come only from the fact that I feel privileged in the midst of so much martyrdom. I do not feel healthy comparatively. I am healthy, absolutely. For a long time I knew that my health could reside only in my own conviction, and it was foolish nonsense, worthy of a hypnagogue dreamer, to try to reach it through treatment rather than persuasion. I suffer some pains, true, but they lack significance in the midst of my great health. I can put a sticking-plaster here or there, but the rest has to move and fight and never dawdle in immobility as the gangrenous do. Sorrow and love—life, in other words—cannot be considered a sickness because they hurt.

  I admit that before I could be convinced of my health, my destiny had to change and warm my organism with struggle and above all with victory. It was business that healed me and I want Dr. S. to know it.

  Stunned and inert, I contemplated the upheaval of the world until the beginning of August of last year. Then I began to buy. I underline this verb because it has a higher meaning now than it had before the war. On a businessman’s lips, then, it meant he was prepared to acquire a given article. But when I said it, I meant that I was the buyer of any goods that might be offered me. Like all strong people, I had in my head a sole idea, and by that I lived and it made my fortune. Olivi wasn’t in Trieste, but it is certain that he would never have allowed such risk and would have left it all for others. But for me it was no risk. I knew its happy outcome with complete certainty. First, following the age-old custom of wartime, I had set about converting all my wealth to gold, but there was a certain difficulty in buying and selling gold. Gold that might be called liquid, as it was more mobile, was merchandise, and I stocked up on it. From time to time I also do some selling, but always to a lesser extent than my buying. Because I began at the right moment, my buying and my selling have been so fortunate that the latter provided me with the great means I needed for the former.